Users of electronic mail and messaging systems often want to be notified of an event, which could be a notification that an e-mail message has been received in a mailbox or be a notification regarding a telephone message, stock quote notification, or other notification regarding a received message. Sometimes a user may have a preferred medium or communications format for receiving the alert, including an e-mail Short Messaging Service (SMS) message, a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) message, or other type of message to be delivered in a communications format that is preferred by the user at the destination or target address.
There have been a number of prior art proposals for solving these problems and providing alerts for events. For example, sometimes an alert is delivered to a distribution engine in an output communications format desired by the user. This distribution engine, however, performs no transformation of an alert into a communications format desired by a user or destination address. Thus, any alert must be input in the desired format. In yet another proposal, the input format to an alert system can originate from a variety of sources, and can be in the form Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), local files, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Structured Query Language (SQL), and other multiple formats. In this prior art proposal, the alert system appears to have access to a user's personal information and settings, but there is not transformation into a desired communications format.
U.S. published patent application No. 2002/0087643 provides a notification system and generates alerts. Messages are left for a user, for example, a voice mail, an e-mail, or a CRM event. Different folders are maintained by messaging services. The notification system detects any additions to a user's folders and when a new message arrives, the notification system sends an alert to a Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) enabled device, e.g., cell phone, configured for the user. The alert can include a number of messages of each type received for the user and an indication of a most recently received message. The notification system could monitor an information source for new information that may be of interest to the user and provide these as an alert notification when certain conditions are met.
In U.S. published patent application No. 2002/0129354, a series of templates allows a user to define events and information alerts to be triggered by the events. A knowledge switch uses event definitions and contacts and schedules information to detect events and distributes alerts to intended recipients when an event occurs.
Many of these prior art proposals identified above do not provide an alert to a user in a communications medium or protocol preferred by a user, at the target address desired by the user, whether e-mail or mobile phone. For example, different users could desire an alert in the form of an e-mail, SMS, WAP or other communications protocol. Also, it would be desirable if any alert engine that delivers an alert has access to a user profile in order to deliver this alert in a communications format preferred by the user.